The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara)

by Webster, Jason

  Now, though, there was a change in him. He couldn’t see it clearly yet – it was more a sense, a feeling – but it was there. For the first time he was becoming aware of this belief in himself. Before, it had simply been how he thought, how he saw things, and so it had been all but invisible.

  So what had happened? Did he not need that belief any more?

  La pera dura con el tiempo madura. A hard pear ripens with time.

  For the first time in his life he could almost grasp the concept – emotionally, not just intellectually – of a world where cause and meaning did not exist, or if they did were beyond ordinary understanding: a world that did not provide reasons for his or anyone else’s suffering.

  The truth is only ever what you perceive it to be.

  For some reason he could hear Hilario’s voice inside his head, as though he’d been listening in on his thoughts.

  Yes, that was probably what he would say. He wondered how much longer he’d have his grandfather around to talk to. Perhaps he’d never really listened to him. Not properly.

  Eduardo García had a pile of papers next to him on the table at the bar where they’d arranged to meet. Cámara sat down next to him, ordering a café solo from the waiter. García had already started on a café con leche.

  ‘Bring me another one as well,’ he called out to the disappearing waiter.

  ‘Caffeine hit?’ asked Cámara.

  ‘We’ve got a lot on – lots of things to sort out and finalise.’

  Cámara shuffled in his chair, making himself more comfortable.

  ‘So what’s up? What’s so urgent?’

  García patted the papers on the table.

  ‘We’ve got the green light at last. The regional administration has agreed and we can go ahead with the dig at the cemetery. We’re starting tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yes, I saw the tents up.’

  ‘We’ve been set up for a few days now, waiting for the final word.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘The opposition right-wing party are against it – say we shouldn’t be digging up the past, that the Civil War is over, we need to move on, that kind of thing. And that we shouldn’t be spending our money on things like this.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’re planning on taking this to the regional supreme court, trying to get it stopped. So we have to move fast before we get some kind of injunction on us.’

  ‘I see.’

  The waiter brought their coffees. Cámara took a sip.

  ‘And you needed to see me because of this?’

  ‘We have to get the families’ permission to dig up their relatives. It’s a formality. I know you said you were happy for this to go ahead, but we really need someone – either you or your grandfather – to actually sign the paperwork. I tried calling your home number a couple of times, but there was no reply.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Cámara said. ‘Here, just tell me where.’

  García gave him a pen and passed over the papers one by one, signalling where the signatures were required on each one.

  ‘What will happen to the body?’ Cámara asked. ‘Assuming you find it.’

  ‘There has to be an identification first. That’s where a DNA sample would be useful. And there will be a forensic examination to formalise cause of death.’

  ‘And then you hand the body over to us?’

  ‘These aren’t normal cases. We understand that. If you want to be given the remains and hold a private burial service – that’s what some people opt for. Others – most people, in fact – are happy for a collective ceremony to be held for all the individuals found in the mass grave. The decomposition has reached such an advanced stage, you see, and it’s not always possible to separate one body from another. We were thinking of some kind of memorial, perhaps a plaque in the park.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be so frank like this.’

  ‘It’s all right. I mean, Maximiliano was – is – a relative of mine. But I never met him – he died a couple of decades before I was even born.’

  ‘It might be harder for your grandfather.’

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You don’t have to decide now. With these papers – and the others I’ve got from the other families – we can get started on the dig. In the meantime you can be thinking about how you might want to proceed afterwards. There’s a plan to create a special park commemorating everyone who was a victim of the reprisals.’

  ‘There was something I wanted to ask you,’ Cámara said. García leaned an elbow on the table, anxious to get away with his signed papers.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How much do you know about Maximiliano? About how he was discovered and imprisoned? My grandfather said he was a topo for a few years, living in secret inside their home.’

  ‘Many papers have been destroyed,’ García said. ‘But for some of the victims we can piece together an idea of what happened. Thankfully, Maximiliano is one of those cases.’

  ‘My grandfather said something about him being betrayed.’

  ‘Maximiliano went into hiding right at the end of the war,’ García said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I assume he had nowhere else to go. The city was surrounded.’

  ‘But someone else must have known he was at home? From what Hilario said, the soldiers simply walked in and took him away, as though they’d known all along.’

  ‘From what we’ve learned, it seems they were tipped off,’ García said.

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Another topo in the city was discovered just a couple of days before Maximiliano. He was tortured and from what we can gather he began to talk. The authorities suspected other Republican supporters were hidden away in the city, and they wanted to find them all. It was all part of Franco’s plan to eradicate the “other” Spain, the one he’d beaten in the battlefield. Now he wanted to make sure he’d rooted them all out from their hiding places.’

  García picked up the papers and tucked them under his arm.

  ‘So yes, we think Maximiliano was given away by this other topo. He must have known that Maximiliano was hiding at home as well. Perhaps they told each other before going into hiding, at the end of the war, before Franco’s troops marched in. I’m not sure.’

  ‘But who was it? Who told them where to find my great-grandfather?’

  ‘A communist called Francisco Faro Cordero. He was an administrator in the Republican government here in Albacete – just a young man at the time. But for giving names his death sentence was commuted to life. Then in the fifties he was released under one of the amnesty plans.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He moved to a village not far from here. Pozoblanco. Just a small place. Started growing saffron. Became mayor. His son’s mayor there now. Paco Faro Oscuro. Odd fellow – runs the place like a collective, they say. Funny – your grandfather asked me about this when I first spoke to him.’

  But Cámara wasn’t listening. He was already out the door and running down the street.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE FLAT WAS ten minutes away; he couldn’t lose any time. Yet already, the moment he opened the front door and ran up the staircase, he could sense that Hilario had gone.

  He checked every room – the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room – but Hilario was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d popped out for a stroll. Yes. Or perhaps instead he was out seeking revenge for his father’s murder years before – a murder he had tried and failed to stop.

  He started pulling open the drawers, two at a time. Where had Alicia found the Luger? The gun had been here all those years and yet he’d never discovered it himself. Had Hilario hidden it better when Cámara was a young boy living here with him? Perhaps he’d taken it out of its hiding place and put it somewhere more immediately accessible. Did he have it on him now? Was he about to use it again?

  Cámara pulled out every drawer he
could see, frantically searching through the papers and random household goods for any sight of the old pistol. A dusty pack of cards, Hilario’s birth certificate, old telephone bills, letters from Eduardo García about the excavation work planned at the cemetery . . . but no gun. It had gone.

  If Pilar were here he could ask her. Wasn’t it strange that she should have left them only the day before? She had been with them for years. Why did Hilario do that? Had he really got her stoned? Had she then made a pass at him? Why now?

  Hilario had made the story up, he thought. He’d wanted her gone, out of the way. He’d been planning this for some time. Remove Pilar, and then he could go ahead with whatever it was he had in mind.

  Which was what, exactly? Cámara couldn’t say. All he knew was that his grandfather was somewhere in Albacete with a loaded gun on him, bearing a grudge that had dogged him for decades.

  Paco Faro Oscuro’s father had betrayed Hilario’s; it was Francisco Faro Cordero who had told the Francoist authorities about Maximiliano’s hideaway in his flat. And while Maximiliano had ended up getting shot, Francisco Faro Cordero had escaped death and had gone on to become a saffron farmer in Pozoblanco. And now his son, Paco, was running the village like a cult leader, heading an international saffron mafia from this unprepossessing village in La Mancha.

  Hilario hadn’t known any of this. He could only have guessed that someone had betrayed his father. Then Eduardo García had shown up, talking of digging up Maximiliano’s remains, and telling the story of how he had been arrested.

  Only then, over sixty years after the event, did Hilario find out the truth about what had happened. Had he been hiding that Luger all those years for this? Had he been secretly waiting for a chance to avenge his father’s death?

  Was that what Mirella’s murder had been about? The thought remained in the back of Cámara’s mind, only partially formed. He couldn’t bring himself to think of his grandfather as a raper and killer of a fifteen-year-old girl.

  Yet he had to find him, urgently. First Pilar’s dismissal, now his disappearance, almost certainly with the Luger. Something was afoot and Cámara had to reach him as quickly as possible. Otherwise he feared the worst.

  A settling of scores. The phrase passed insistently through his mind as he dashed down the stairs again and out into the street. Juan Manuel Heredia had used the phrase when he’d gone to see him in jail. And someone else recently, although he couldn’t remember who. That’s what this was about, though, surely. Years later, there was a settling of scores from way back in the Civil War period. Perhaps the people who criticised the opening up of these old mass graves were right – the country wasn’t ready for it; the wounds hadn’t healed; all they were doing was stirring up bad blood. Hilario had a right to know how and why his father had died. But was it really such a good idea if it led to this?

  Cámara tapped out a number on his phone and a police operator answered.

  Put out an alert – an armed man is out somewhere on the streets of Albacete, current location unknown. He may be heading to the village of Pozoblanco. Inform all units. He’s dangerous. Yes, dangerous, even though he’s over eighty years old.

  The weight in his voice overrode the doubts in the operator’s mind. You didn’t come across that many armed and dangerous OAPs. But the caller on the other end of the phone appeared to have some experience and seemed to know what he was talking about. He might even be a policeman himself, from the way he talked.

  As soon as he was confident that the message had been received, Cámara ended the call and dialled another number.

  ‘Jiménez speaking,’ came a leaden voice.

  ‘It’s Cámara. I’ve got something for you.’

  Jiménez listened as Cámara explained about his grandfather, the Luger, and the Civil War connection with Faro Oscuro. Something appeared to click inside the inspector as Cámara spoke. Yes, this was something he could understand, and there was an urgency to it. The adrenalin was starting to move, the rush, the moment all desk-bound policemen are always hoping will arrive.

  ‘Tell Yago,’ Cámara said before Jiménez could put down the phone.

  ‘He left,’ Jiménez said. ‘Twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘Dunno. He was in a hurry. Got a call when we were in a meeting and just left.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Something about his wedding ring. Not sure. He was mumbling. Said someone had found his wedding ring, I think.’

  The line went dead.

  Cámara stood still on the pavement. Cars cruised by, elderly women brushed past, dragging their shopping trolleys behind them, a man walking his dog smiled as he stopped and then crossed the road.

  An ordinary street scene, a city going about its business. Yet Cámara’s world had just stopped, as though some beating pulse that pushed it along had seized up and frozen.

  Who else had recently talked to him of a settling of scores?

  It was an easy way to explain away a murder, as Heredia had said.

  Was that why Hilario had asked about the wedding ring?

  And those pills, the ones that made you lose weight rapidly . . .

  Slowly he lifted his hands to his face, covered his eyes, and then dragged his fingers down over his cheeks, smoothing out the skin and drawing it tight.

  He had been stupid and blind. Blinded by his own grief, his own beliefs.

  But now he knew. And more importantly, he had a very good idea of where he would find Hilario.

  He had to run, though, as quickly as he could. He’d already lost a lot of time.

  The narrow pavements were too busy with other people, so he hopped out on to the street and began skipping in and out of the cars. There was a furious honk as he narrowly missed the wheels of a bus, but he was quickly round a corner and almost out of earshot before the driver could start shouting abuse.

  Down side streets where there were fewer cars, the doorways and shop windows flashing past in a blur.

  A dead end: the road had been cut off for re-tarmacking. Only a tiny pathway had been left for pedestrians and it was now packed with a group of small schoolchildren holding hands as they walked and giggled their way on an outing with their teachers.

  Cámara vaulted the barricade and leapt over the patch of hot fresh asphalt.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  The roadworkers were excited out of their normal lethargy by the sight of him sailing through the air in front of them.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Out and away from the tight, crowded streets and on to a wider avenue leading away from the city centre and towards the industrial quarter. Already he could see the warehouses in the distance, and next to them, on the left, a patch of ground, still empty of buildings after all these years.

  He had to cross a busy thoroughfare to get to it. The traffic was heavy at that time of day but he couldn’t wait for the lights to change in his favour. Holding out his hands he waved for the cars and lorries to stop as he stepped out. There was a screeching of tyres and a bump as one car crunched into the back of another, not reacting in time to the sudden halting of the flow. Another car almost caught his hand with the wing mirror as it swept past him, but Cámara just managed to pull his arm away in time.

  No insult was too good for the idiot who had leapt in front of them and almost caused a serious accident. But Cámara’s mind was elsewhere – on the wasteland a few more yards ahead. The weeds and crumbling wall meant he still couldn’t see inside, but with one more leap he could make it.

  If he was right Hilario would be there, Luger in hand. Cámara just hoped he could get there before Hilario’s target showed up as well, and stop another murder from taking place.

  A settling of scores. He should have seen it himself before.

  TWENTY-NINE

  YAGO WAS STANDING by the rubbish container, his arms hanging by his sides, his head lowered, but his eyes fixed ahead, flashi
ng with an animal keenness at the threat now facing him. Five yards in front, with his back to Cámara, stood Hilario, his right arm outstretched with the Luger clutched in his hand.

  Cámara moved as quickly and as silently as he could. If he surprised his grandfather he might cause him to pull the trigger. He had to get to him before it was too late.

  He dropped down and started scampering through the tall weeds. Hilario was talking, saying something to Yago, but Cámara couldn’t hear. As he drew closer, though, he could see that Hilario’s arm was beginning to shake – he was incapable of holding the gun still in his condition. Any shot would almost certainly miss its target.

  Which Yago would notice and be aware of.

  Perhaps distracting Hilario might be the best thing to do. In that gap he might just be able to get to him before Yago did.

  There was a crackle as his foot pressed down on a tin can half-buried in the dirt. He looked up, silently cursing. Yago had heard it too. Cámara dropped down further. Had he been spotted? Spying through the weeds he could see Yago’s eyes were darting between the elderly man with the gun in front of him and the stretches of wasteland surrounding them, checking to see if anyone else were there.

  Hilario twigged that something was up as well. For a moment his head turned to the side, as though wondering what Yago was looking at.

  Yago didn’t waste his chance. Seeing that the old man’s attention had been distracted, he broke into a sprint and charged headlong at Hilario. At that same moment, from down in the weeds, Cámara too leapt up and ran towards the two men.

  CRACK!

  Over half a century since it had last fired, the Luger went off. Cámara was still a few paces away, but he saw Yago and Hilario fall to the floor as they grappled with one another, disappearing into the dead grass and broken debris.

  In a heartbeat Cámara was there as well, reaching down Yago’s face and thrusting his fingers into the man’s eye sockets to pull him away. There was a scream as Yago’s vision left him and he felt a kick in the side as Cámara pushed him away from Hilario. His grandfather.